Richard Hearn on the joys of bath time

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was bath times. At least I imagine that was Charles Dickens’ original draft. Perhaps he wasn’t actually thinking about the French Revolution when he wrote those first sentences, instead trying to get children washed and ready for bed. The good and the bad of parenthood – the hot and cold, if you like – are often shunted against each other, and bath time is the perfect illustration.

In the future, I will miss these moments. When recalling the best bits of being a dad, The Boy and Youngest™’s shrieks of enjoyment at this time will be what I try and recollect. Somehow, they are often entwined with in-the-moment stresses – The Tale of Two Emotions (don’t worry: only one more shoehorned Dickens reference to go).

Despite the fact they like a bath, rounding them up can be like persuading a couple of cats into a basket to take them to the vets. As this is the final leg of what has often been a hard parenting day, you’re keen for bath time to happen quickly. Afterwards, persuading them out is equally difficult. This seems unfair. If one direction’s difficult, surely the opposite should be easy, like cycling up then down a hill? Instead it’s like a mission to Mars. Both legs are tricky. They don’t want to get in the bath. They don’t want to get out.

“Their excitment and fun is so pure”

The big positive at bath times is The Boy is great at being an older brother, just about the funniest companion you can ever be, with a range of jokes that involve water. At his best, Youngest™ is a bustling delight, all smiles and shrieks and giggles at his older brother (who he may well have been fighting with ten minutes before). Their excitement and fun is so pure.

However, there’s always something that you can predict with accuracy at bath time (and I’m not talking about displacement). It’s that the excitement will rise, still delightful heading into unstable. I think I’ve got the word: hysteria. A pitch of excitement like the high ominous whine of a incoming rocket. ‘Hysteria’ should be the name of a children’s shampoo.

Something will then happen while they’re rubber ducking about – a wrong splash, a mistimed toy hitting the other, an argument over a tap – and the mood instantly turns. They turn from best of friends to mortal enemies. Not so much pistols at dawns, as battleships at dusk.
On my birthday I managed to delegate the bath time task. And I can honestly say, that “was a far, far better thing that I did then than I have ever done”.